1/31/2012

Artist Danny Haas has created some very cool prints of superheroines and their alter egos. Not only are they art deco and stylish, but they also capture how iconic some female heroes are in the comics. While male superheroes like Batman and Superman are easily recognized, these ladies have their own look as well, both in costume and their personal life. Only complaint is that I wish he hadn't gone so overboard with the distressed look. Check out the pics below...

The Break-Down 1. If you bought the Transformers: Dark of the Moon DVD, you may have noticed that there are zero extras. Just the movie and nothing else. Director Michael Bay said he was holding out for the 3-D version of the disk and it wasn't ready yet. Now at last you can pick up the three-disk combo of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It's loaded with extras and looks great. I'll definitely be picking it up. Since I don't know anyone that has a 3-D TV, I'll just hold onto it in the unlikely event I get one. If you have a 3-D TV, please call me. I'll bring pizza.

Above and Beyond: Exploring Dark of the Moon
- Rising from the Fallen: Development and Design
- Ready for Prime Time: Filming Across America
- Battle in the Heartland: Shooting in Chicago
- Attack of the Birdmen: Aerial Stunts
- Shadow of the Sentinel: Post-Production and Release
- Uncharted Territory: NASA's Future Then and Now

2. Here's the most amazing Transformers Trilogy you'll ever see. It's the seven disk Transformers Limited Edition Collector's Trilogy Set. According to Bay it's the greatest disk you'll ever own with a box that unfolds to display all seven disks and a hand-signed plaque by Michael Bay. Originally listed at $150, it's at Amazon for just under a $90. That's a pretty good price. Plus, they're only making 5000 of these. Which means, by the time you read this, they've probably all been sold. You can check Amazon, but this is going to be one of those rare over-priced items eBay loves to auction off. Check out the unboxing video by Bay himself.

3. For Star Trek fans, we've got the Blu-Ray disk Star Trek: The Next Generation - Next Level. The reason they call it the next level is because there have been disks before. The big difference in this one is image quality. They created a process to take the original film negatives and create "1080p HD masters with true HD visual effects". It's a pretty sweet transfer too. The image quality looks great, especially if you watch the trailer. I added a picture below, but it doesn't really do it justice.

The only down-side for this disk is it's called a "sampler". So, it only has three episodes. The feature-length version of the two-part series pilot, "Encounter at Farpoint," and fan-favorite episodes "Sins of the Father" and "The Inner Light." If you're only going to watch three episodes from the series I couldn't have picked a better choice. Season one is coming out later on.

3. I would never recommend going to the theater for In Time (2011), the Justin Timberlake film about a world where people use life as currency, but it's a definite rental. The movie got 3 out of 5 stars from me in my review. I'm planning to watch it again and see of my opinion changes.

4. This one sounds surprisingly good, but I'm pretty sure I'll never see it. Originally called
Dr. Jekylly el
Hombre Lobo, it's the Spanish film Dr. Jekyll Vs. The Werewolf (1972). Here's the synopsis, "Paul Naschy returns as El Hombre Lobo for the sixth time as he searches for a
cure to his lycanthropy by visiting the grandson of the infamous Dr. Jekyll. He
is given a serum that transforms him into a Hyde-like personality in the hope
that it will sublimate his werewolf-self, but it results unfortunately in an
even more savage monster."
Doesn't that sound cool? Unfortunately, it doesn't say if it's subtitled or dubbed or anything. I don't know enough Spanish to watch it. It's a limited edition which means there are only 500 units and each hand numbered. Kind of cool.

5. If you've ever wondered if Carmen Electra and Charlie O'Donnell stopped acting and if Brooke Hogan ever started, the film 2 Headed Shark Attackmay or may not answer the question. Directed by Christopher Olen Ray it's another D-Movie horror movie based on the idea that nothing is scary than sharks with bizarre deformities. The synopsis is great: "When a college educational ship is sunk by
a mutated two-headed shark, the survivors escape to a deserted atoll.
But when it starts flooding, the coeds are no longer safe from the
double jaws of the monster." Checking out the Asylum website, it looks like they decided to skip using CGI and made horrible life-size rubber sharks. This could be hilariously bad, so I hope it comes to Syfy.

6. Finally, for the science fans comes the Blu-Ray disk Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking. A Discovery channel series original it's described this way: "Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking is an epic new kind of cosmology series, a Planet Earth of the heavens. It takes the world's most famous scientific mind and sets it free, powered by the limitless possibilities of computer animation. Hawking gives us the ultimate guide to the universe, a ripping yarn based on real science, spanning the whole of space and time -- from the nature of the universe itself, to the chances of alien life, and the real possibility of time travel." I hope this doesn't sound mean, but it's narrated by Stephen Hawkings and it doesn't sound anything like him. I don't know if that's because he has a better voice synthesizer or they have someone reading his text, but he sounds normal. Here's a clip if you're interested.

What disks are you buying this week? Any stuff you'd recommend buying?

"There were no pants. (The male costumes for TRON were) about as close to being naked as you could be. It hid nothing. Thank God we were only thirty or thirty-one years-old and in good shape. I think there was a situation where we had to wear bathrobes if we went outside or to the commissary. The old secretaries were having the vapors with these young butt cheeks standing there."

Then there's another part where the book discusses the problems of the lighting on the costume, specifically the butt. Harrison Ellenshaw, the visual effects supervisor, explained:

"Steve Lisberger [writer, director] was in dailies one day and noted that because there was so much black circuitry on Bruce Boxleitner's original costume butt, the final shots as finished made Tron's butt glow a lot."

Glenn Campbell, the animation compositor said:

"All the guys would be running down the hallway and they'd be looking like blue butt baboons because they have this glowing a**!...I still have daily reports that say this shot approved, this shot approved, this shot needs butt grads. [Which] meant that that a shot had to go back and someone has to go through every frame, by hand, and airbrush a darkening density on a guy's a** so it doesn't glow as much."

An enterprising geek, named David Johns, took the fourth draft of the Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope script and colored the words to make a black and red portrait of the evil man himself: Darth Vader.

The smaller image doesn't do it justice, so here is the enormous hi-resolution version from his site.

It's a beautiful image, and it only gets better when you zoom in to read
the text. For example, zoom into Vader's left eye and you get this.

Head over to his site for the full Darth Vader image, plus several other sizes and a limited edition A1 framed print.

1/29/2012

A German schoolteacher who calls herself sillysparrowness built a full-sized TARDIS model. Not only is it a dead ringer, but she even made it collapsible and transportable, so she can disassemble and reassemble it in other parts of the house within minutes. But besides the actual project, the best part about the video isn't just the fact that she's building a TARDIS, but the self-deprecating humor, the multiple characters she plays herself, and the overall endearingly nerdy style. [WARNING: Contains profanity...I think. Kind of hard to tell with the accent, but I'm pretty sure the F-bomb is dropped a couple times. Might be some German profanity, too, but I don't speak German.]

Some other random thoughts.

It seems like she learned English from the UK, because her accent alternates between a British and a German accent. Which is kinda cute.

She actually built a police box, not a TARDIS. I mean, I know it's kind of interchangeable, but it kind of isn't.

The number of views on this video (at the time of this writing, 141,000) seems ridiculously low, considering the awesomeness of it all.

1/27/2012

In The Muppets, one of my favorite characters was '80's Robot. It looks like his grandfather was in this short film, recently unearthed by AT&T's Bell Labs. Apparently, the clip was created by Jim Henson's studios for an executive seminar that had a theme of the uneasy relationship between man and machine. In the hilarious video, Computer H-14 explains how machines don't require mankind, while proving otherwise.

1. Trivia Question
In the 1999 film The Matrix, about people fighting a battle in a virtual world, why was one of Morpheus' crew nicknamed "Switch"?

2. Motivational Geek Quote
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear's path, and only I will remain." - Paul Atreides Dune (1984)

4. Trivia Answer:
Switch (played by Belinda McClory) was originally supposed to androgynous. A man in the real world and a woman in the Matrix.Warner Bros. had the character changed and she ended up playing both roles.

Remakes of films and television shows are tricky. Some are watchable, like War of The Worlds, and others are horrid like The Bionic Woman.

There's a built-in audience of people looking to relive memories, so Hollywood loves remakes. We hate them because it destroys our memories of the originals.

However, some actually manage to improve on the original in some way. Feast your eyes on our Deja Vu list of remakes that have managed to surpass the original movie or TV show.

1. Battlestar Galactica (2003) / Battlestar Galactica (1978)
In 1978, Glen Larson created a show about the last survivors of the human race searching for a home while being pursued by the evil robotic Cylons. Catching Star Wars' wave of popularity, the show got a lot of attention. Lorne Green, Dirk Benedict and other popular actors starred and the show became a cult classic. We rarely use the word "cult" to describe something popular though. The show was canceled after 34 episodes. Decades later, the show was "reimagined" by Ron Moore into a gritty, dark and more realistic series. A new classic, the show ran for four seasons and won 32 awards. Bryan Singer is working on a film closer to the original concept, but well see if it takes off.Get this movie

2. The Fly (1986) / The Fly (1958)
The 1958 horror film about a transporter accident that changed a scientist into a hybrid fly man is one of the most beloved science-fiction films ever made. Master director David Cronenberg took the film and found new material in the decades old film. He asked questions like "Why would a transporter just swap the head and arm of the fly? How would a human fly think and eat? Could you really love a man that was falling apart before your eyes? He hired the brilliant Jeff Goldblum, amped up the gore and produced a film that stands as one of his greatest works. There was a remake of the sequel, Son of the Fly, but we'll just pretend that never happened. Sequel? What are you talking about? Starring Eric who?Get this movie

3. One Million Years B.C.(1966) / One Million B.C.(1940)
One Million B.C. was a 1940s film about a caveman trying to unite two warring tribes. Directed by Hal Roach, the film stars the famous Victor Mature and your favorite pin-up girl Carole Landis. Wait? You've never heard of them? That's strange. The 1960s remake One Million Years B.C. gave us Rachel Welch in a fur bikini. Sound familiar? Plus, awesome dinosaur stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen. The rest, as they say, is history.Get this movie

4. The Omega Man (1971) \ The Last Man On Earth (1964)
The brilliant 1960s novel I Am Omega, about the last human left after a plague has changed the world into vampire-like creatures, spawned three movies. The first, 1964's The Last Man On Earth starring Vincent Price is good. The second, The Omega Man starring Charleston Heston, is the most well-known and popular version. There's a third film, of course, the 2007 blockbuster I Am Legend starring Will Smith. Its watchable, but is the least faithful to the novel.Get this movie

5. Little Shop of Horrors (1986) / Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
In 1960, Roger Corman made a cheesy horror film about a guy with a man-eating plant in his flower shop. Jack Nicholson guest starred as a masochistic dental patient. The whole idea was laughably ridiculous, which is why someone had a bright idea to make it into a comedy. In the late eighties out was remade after a successful run on Broadway as a musical comedy. Special effects by Henson and dynamite music makes it unrecognizable as the schlocky Corman film.Get this movie

6. King Kong (2005) / King Kong (1976)
The movie about a giant ape going crazy in New York touched the heart of millions. The stop motion special effects Ray Harryhausen are still amazing even by today's standards. In 1976, they decided to remake the film using a guy in a very realistic suit, but really didn't capture the magic of the original. In 2005, Peter Jackson remade the film using cutting edge computer effects and using scenes based on ones cut from the original 1933 film. Jackson's film isn't better than the first film, but its better than the 1976 remake.Get this movie

7. The Thing (1982) / The Thing From Another World (1951)

The 1951 film The Thing From Another World is based on a 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. The story follows a crew in the arctic fending off a blood-thirsty alien plant. Yep. A plant. The film is another science-fiction classic. In 1982, John Carpenter took the idea of being trapped in a remote Arctic outpost with a shape-shifting alien to the furthest level possible. Where else could you see blobs made out of dogs to heads running around on their own. The remake explored the paranoia and fear like no one else could.Get this movie

8. 12 Monkeys (1996) / La Jetée (1962)
Nobody watches snooty French films, so we're forgiven for not watching the French short film La Jetée (1962). But a lot of people watched the Terry Gilliam film 12 Monkeys starring Bruce Willis as a mental patient sent back in time to figure out the cause of a pandemic. Artful, visually stunning and deep characterization made the film accessible to many and another great remake.Get this movie

Is there a remake you liked better than the original? Let us know in the comments.

1/24/2012

Are Doctor Who and the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the same universe? Maybe not, but let's pretend it is. Based on the animation from the original mini-series, this clip imagines how the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would have described the Daleks from Doctor Who. Not only are the animation and description extremely faithful to the books, but the creator even went back and re-dubbed it with a Peter Jones sound-a-like. YouTubers, we need more of these. A lot more.

This week has a number of interesting DVDs being released you may want to pick up. The star is Real Steel of course, but there are a couple of Japanese releases you may like and, if your a fan of the 1970s Buck Rogers series, it's finally on DVD! Sort of.

The Break-Down1. I missed Real Steel when it hit theaters, so I'm excited about the three-disc Combo (Blu-ray/DVD + Digital Copy) dropping on Blu-ray and DVD this week. They say the real heart of the film is the relationship with the son (Dakota Goya) and his dad (Hugh Jackman).

Product Details

Actors: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Dakota Goyo

Directors: Shawn Levy

Format: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC

Language: English

Subtitles: English, French, Spanish

Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)

Number of discs: 1

Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Studio: Walt Disney Studios

DVD Release Date: January 24, 2012

Run Time: 127 minutes

Special features

Four featurettes: - Countdown to the Fight: The Charlie Kenton Story - Sugar Ray Leonard: Cornerman's Champ - Making of Metal Valley - Building the Bots

2. If your a fan of Godzilla you'll want to pick up Godzilla (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] (1954) for $27.99. It's pretty much the greatest version ever made of the Japanese film and has a ton of special features.

3. For the alien conspiracy nuts, you can check out Ancient Aliens: Season Three. I've never seen it, but it supposedly traces alien activity through-out history. If it's on the History Channel, it has to be true right?

5. Roger Corman is the king of sclock exploitative film-making, so you may want to pick up Roger Corman's Cult Classic's Lethal Ladies Collection, Vol. 2 which has The Arena, Cover Girl Models and Fly Me. The taglines, "Black Slave. White slave", "This airline serves three wild dishes. Take your choice." and "Million-dollare fold-outs who never hold out!" mean these have got to be good.

In 2010, Kazuko Yoshiyama (Narumi Yasuda) works as a pharmaceutical researcher secretly developing a formula for time travel. When she is left comatose after a car accident, her daughter Akari learns of her mother's first love, Kazuo Fukamachi (Kanji Ishimaru), from Kazuko's friend Goro Asakura (Masanobu Katsumura). Believing that finding Kazuo will allow her mother to regain consciousness, Akari uses Kazuko's formula to leap back in time to the 1970s in hopes of finding a younger Kazuo. Instead, she meets and befriends Ryota Mizorogi (Nakao Akiyoshi). Together, they attempt to search for Kazuo, but love begins to blossom between Akari and Ryota, despite the fact that Akari must eventually return to the future.